Akira Kurosawa’s drama about a dying civil servant is worth anyone’s evening. Takashi Shimura makes the fear of wasted time painfully ordinary, even when the satire keeps explaining what we have already understood.
Ikiru asks what a man can do when the chance to begin again arrives almost too late. Kanji Watanabe, a Tokyo civil servant played by Takashi Shimura, has terminal cancer and little confidence that his life has amounted to much. Akira Kurosawa gives his search for a purpose the seriousness it deserves, without making everyone else solemn on his behalf. We would recommend it to almost anyone. There is more comedy here than the subject might suggest.
Shimura is the reason we stay with it. He gives Watanabe a hesitancy that makes the search uncomfortable to watch: this is someone who has to learn how to want something. We were moved more than we expected by the uncertainty on his face, and by how little he tries to disguise it. The performance never asks us to admire him simply for being ill. That awkwardness stops the character becoming an example of how the rest of us ought to behave.
Asakazu Nakai’s cinematography gives Shimura’s expressions room to register; the framing does not compete with him for our attention. Takashi Matsuyama’s production design makes the working environment feel established enough to go on indefinitely, with or without this particular employee. That helps the satire, because the bureaucracy needs to look ordinary before its indifference can become frightening. The film understands the comfort of a job in which carrying on as before can pass for doing what is required.
Fumio Hayasaka’s music is sympathetic without making Watanabe’s fear seem grander than it is. The score supplies warmth around a performance that remains guarded, and it never feels like a substitute for what Shimura is doing. Kurosawa also edits, allowing hesitation to occupy time that a brisker drama might fill with explanations. At 143 minutes, this is a substantial demand on a small story. For most of that time, Watanabe’s uncertainty is enough to keep the measured pace from becoming a drag.
The writing is less restrained. Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni are sharp about the ease with which a civil servant can mistake following procedure for doing a useful job. But they return to the complaint after it has registered. Some supporting figures feel too neatly arranged to prove the point, and the satire occasionally tells us what to think before anyone has had a chance to surprise us. These are the stretches where the film feels long, because the behaviour has become predictable.
Dramas about terminal illness often make their subjects wiser at a suspicious speed. Kurosawa allows Watanabe to be embarrassing, uncertain and occasionally funny as he looks for something worth doing. Other people still have their own business to attend to, even when Watanabe’s need feels urgent. His fear matters, but the film does not assume that it will automatically make him the centre of everybody else’s day.
We will leave the later course of Watanabe’s search alone. There is no need to arrive already interested in bureaucracy, or eager for a lesson about appreciating life. Shimura is company enough, even for an evening when the subject sounds forbidding. Give the film the time it asks for, rather than fitting it between other things.
